Every month, the federal government
spends about N15 billion as stipends on 500,000 volunteers ofthe N-Power scheme, a component of the
National Social Investment Programmes (N-SIP). Dubbed as the largest
post-tertiary employment programme in Africa, the Muhammadu Buhari government
sees the scheme as one of its major achievements. Although some critics have
said the programme is non-existent, this investigation that covered a year
revealed that it is real and beneficiaries do not need high-wire connections.

Headquartered under the office of
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, N-Teach is the most popular of the N-SIP, which
also focuses on health, agriculture and public finance. Due to the deficiency
in the number of teaching staff in public schools, many “unemployed graduates”
were deployed to schools in order to complement the efforts of the staff on
ground. But after conniving with corrupt officials, some of these volunteers
abscond from their duty post. They receive monthly stipends with which they
bribe school authorities and milk the federal government in billions of naira.
Taiwo Adebulu went undercover to get first-hand details.

In 2016 when the programme began,
200,000 beneficiaries were selected and deployed to their primary place of
assignment (PPA) out of about 700,000 Nigerian graduates who reportedly
applied. However, several allegations arose from the exercise, ranging from
absenteeism of the volunteers from PPAs, impersonation and fraudulent practices
by officials handling the programme.

With the announcement of the 2017
batch, I proceeded to the N-POWER web portal and registered for the programme.
I selected Ondo state, did an online assessment test on my mobile phone and
participated in the screening process which took place in Akure, the state
capital. Aside the lack of monitoring for the open test which was prone to
malpractice by applicants and the constant tipping of officials by
beneficiaries to get screened on time due to the huge population, the screening
process was largely transparent and efficient.

But despite several efforts by
the administrators to sanitise the exercise and retain only volunteers who are
genuinely unemployed, inside workings still revealed large-scale fraud
involving the programme officials, school officials and beneficiaries who get
paid regularly without reporting for work.

BENEFICIARIES PAYING N8000 TO BE REDEPLOYED

Letter of redeployment

On June 17, 2018, I received a
message from N-POWER congratulating me for being among the 300,000 new
beneficiaries, selected out of 2.5 million applicants, for the second batch
engaged till 2020. With the identification number NPVN/2017/125765, I was
posted to Ikare-Akoko, the headquarters of Akoko north-east local government
area.

At the National Orientation
Agency (NOA) office at the federal secretariat in Akure, where the programme is
coordinated, open-secret deals are being hatched. I met a group of
beneficiaries who had complained of being posted to different local governments
from the ones they chose. They were discussing about one Pascal, a government
official working as an agent for the N-POWER officials. Pascal could “process”
a change of local government. His phone number was shared among the group and I
engaged the agent, who said I should pay N8000 being the usual charge for the
“deal”.

After the amount was paid to his
account, he set off to process the deal. While some deals pulled through, mine
and a few others didn’t. While Pascal assured me that he was going to keep
working on the deal, I received my deployment letter signed by one Olubunmi
Ademosu, the state focal person. I was posted to Ansar Ud Deen Primary (AUD)
School IV, Ekan, and instructed to resume on or before Friday, August 10, 2018.

NOA OFFICIALS CO-ORDINATE THE FRAUD

At the NOA office, I met with the
young officials who where handling the physical verification and assessment.
After explaining to them that I had a stable job but wanted to strike a deal to
“ghost” the exercise, one of them asked if I was ready to pay the sacrifice and
let go with part of my stipend. I told him I was ready to let go.

“But to be sincere with you,
things have changed from the way it used to be with the way the programme is
being seriously monitored now,” an official said.

“During the 2016 set, there was
little or no monitoring. So, it was easy for us to strike good deals with
beneficiaries from here and they won’t show face at their station at all. Now,
the beneficiaries must involve his or her PPA before things can work out
because if we are able to handle our monitoring team, what about the ones who
come from Abuja without notifying us? Go to your PPA and strike a good deal
with the school officials who can easily protect you; then, come back here. In as
much as our own men are aware of the arrangement, there won’t be any problem
when they visit your school.”

THE 50-50 SHADY DEAL

Pupils of AUD climbing a tree to cross the stream to their school

The easiest road to AUD primary
school was through a flowing stream, where I had to climb a tree with some
other pupils to cross a small stream and get to the school. With four
buildings, two totally condemned ones and the other two in use, the school has
a population of about 200 students and six staff in all. Four N-POWER teachers
in the 2017 batch were posted there.

One of the senior teachers
popular called “Mr. Ray” had asked why I resumed late. I told him that I had a
permanent job which I was fully engaged in another town and couldn’t cope with
the stress of combining it with teaching at the school. Then, he offered a way
out if only I was going to “co-operate” and sacrifice part of my monthly
stipend as it is done by my colleagues in other schools.

Mr. Ray

“There is a way we can do it for
you to beat the system and nobody would detect. I will help you find someone
who can impersonate you. You don’t have to come here. The person resumes, bears
your name, appears when supervisors come and you pay the two of us. You have to
divide your stipend into two, half for us and the remaining one for you. You
need to co-operate because that is how your colleagues in other schools are
doing it. In as much we have a good deal with you, you have no problem wherever
you are,” he said.

For the next 15 minutes, Mr. Ray
and I haggled over the sharing formula for my N30,000 stipend. At last, I
succumbed and we agreed to a 50-50 deal. He takes N15,000, out of which he
removes his share and pays the impersonator who would stand in for me in case
there is need for my physical presence while I manage the rest. When asked if
there’s any possibility that the deal might go wrong at any point, Mr. Ray
assured me that he’s going to carry other staff along and also work with
officials of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) who come around
occasionally to check on the volunteers.

“Even with the fact that you are
a man, the person that will represent you will be a woman. They can’t know
because they do not come with your bio-data and passport, even the ones who
come from Abuja sometimes. Any gender could bear your name. You don’t worry;
the SUBEB people are my friends. They are aware of such deals and they also
have their own candidates. We know how to settle them,” he concluded.

The reporter given NPOWER attendance list to fill for the
days absent from work

Thereafter, he gave me the
attendance register where I wrote my name from the days I was absent to that
very day. He assured me that my impersonator would register my name in
subsequent days. In just three days after I left the town, Ray had found a
replacement for me –- a woman indeed. She resumed duty. He reassured me that I
didn’t have to come back again as long as I fulfill my side of the bargain.
Then he jokingly sounded a note of warning. “Don’t forget that I will always
know when your stipend is paid. So, don’t play pranks with me.”

‘WE NEED TO LEGALISE THE CONTRACT AND BE SURE YOU ARE REAL’

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“In fact, the person who signed for you
(former headmaster) said there should be a written document that you will sign
to show that you are going to pay. But Mr. Ray said you will not disappoint.

“Sincerely, I don’t want part of your
money. Just make sure you don’t default in your payment to him every month so
that he can also settle the person representing you. Then, we won’t have any
problem.”

In a chat with the impostor, she said some
officials from the state and N-POWER visited the school twice but did not pose
any problem as far as someone was available to bear the name and Ray had also
done the needful.

FREE MONEY FOR THE BOYS

"Alert is raining now"

On November 30, after four months in which
the programme began, beneficiaries started receiving bank alerts for their
stipends. In a Facebook group for the beneficiaries, one of the members posted,
“Alert is raining now. I received mine…EcoBank”. In the comment section, others
trooped to testify that the alert is really “raining” and it keeps pouring. One
said, “May this rain not stop, let it keep raining. This is showers of
blessing.” At this point, it had not “rained” at my location several miles away
from my PPA.

An hour later, I received alerts on my
phone. It trickled in one after the other. They were stipends for three months
and amounted to N90,000. The next day, I received a call from Ray to ascertain
if the “rain” also poured at my location. I answered in the affirmative.

Screen shot of successful transfer of 30K to Ray

“Should I send my account number? This is
free money for the boys,” he said immediately and chuckled. The next day, I
sent him N30,000 to pay for two months of the contract.

A week after, the impostor called me to
complain that Ray had refused to fulfill his side of the contract. After so much
persuasion, the senior teacher paid the impostor for one month and kept the
remaining fund to himself.

BILLIONS OF NAIRA GOING DOWN THE DRAIN

N-POWER beneficiaries at a rally in Akure

In 2016, the government had reportedly
budgeted N500 billion for the N-SIP. However, as of May 16, only about N41
billion had been expended on the four programmes with the N-Power gulping N26
billion. According to Osinbajo, the N-Power scheme would provide jobs for at
least 10 million Nigerians by 2023 — yet more money will go down the drain to
volunteers who are not present at work, possibly because they have other jobs,
but have found their way to beat the system in a way that fetch them “side
money”.

In 2017, while addressing 5,559 volunteers
in Kwara state, Afolabi Imoukhuede, senior special sssistant (SSA) to the
president on job creation and youth employment, reportedly said about 60
volunteers on the programme are on payment hold and may be prosecuted for fraud.

He added that 363 volunteers in Kwara were
ghosts and did not exist in the programme, while those found guilty of
absenteeism would be forced to return all stipends received and prosecuted.
Even with the warnings, findings showed that there is no solid structure in
place to weed the ghost volunteers out of the system as they continue to milk
the federal government billions of naira monthly.

N-POWER REACTS

Imokhuede with Osinbajo

In an interview with TheCable, Imokhuede
said he was aware of the cases of absenteeism in the programme but there was no
way they could run a perfect system. He, however, denied that there is fraud in
the system.

“That’s not true. That does not exist in
NPOWER programme. We do know that there is no perfect system. But I do expect a
minimal number of Judas out of every congregation of 12. There’s nothing you’ve
written that I am not aware of,” Imokhuede said.

“When we took the programme online, there
were chances that those who deserve it and those who do not will come into the
programme. That was why we introduced the physical verification process, which
was a process they all had to go through before being engaged formally into the
programme. The process helps check that there are no ghosts. Everyone was
verified to be an individual, qualified, and has a BVN.

“Our state focal persons are mandated to
provide us monthly reports of attendance, discipline and compliance by the
volunteers. When people engage in absenteeism, they go on payment hold
immediately. There is a control mechanism. Yes, you can be deployed and choose
not to go to work every day if you want to dictate your own time. That is not
our terms and conditions. It’s a full-time volunteering programme.

“What your investigative journalism will
help us in doing is to name and shame as we often do on all our platforms when
we receive the reports. For the second batch, we had 1.8 million qualified
applications after we removed double-counts and incomplete applications from
the 2.5 million we received and we selected 300,000. Like I do tell them, for
everyone, there are other qualified Nigerians that can replace them.

“The volunteers have a whistle blower
programme where they report themselves, especially those who don’t go to work.
We have NPOWER in the states and local governments who have formed a monitoring
team and they report absenteeism. We have independent monitors in every local
government who also give us reports every month. Then, if some volunteers are
really smart to beat all the systems, I can assure you that they can beat the
system today, but they can beat it tomorrow.”

Government needs to do more to plug the
loopholes in the project which has no doubt put smiles on many faces.

About Article Author

Chuka (Webby) Aniemeka

Chuka is an experienced certified web developer with an extensive background in computer science and 18+ years in web design &development. His previous experience ranges from redesigning existing website to solving complex technical problems with object-oriented programming. Very experienced with Microsoft SQL Server, PHP and advanced JavaScript. He loves to travel and watch movies.